You are missing the point with the Delta. It's a 21st Century car and a cross between a C - D segment car.
LANCIA ARE MAKING THE FULVIA CONCEPT. IT WILL BE PRESENTED AT THE GENEVA SHOW 2009!
Sorry Alan but unfortunately I disagree with most of what you say.
Firstly, I don't believe anything I read in the press concerning Lancia as according to the press the Fulvietta has been on and off for years.
I for one want a C - D segment car.
Your Audi image making comment, well isn't this what Lancia think they're doing with the new Delta?
"Fascinating engines, point the way to our low CO2 future? Too heavy to be a seriously economical car?" You can't have it both ways. These cars are class leading on consumption!
"Image confused at best" This car really stands out.
"Fulvietta too late" People were offering deposits to FIAT as soon as the concept came out. People are begging for it to be made.
"Even the Delta has been postponed apparently almost indefinitely" Where did you get that from? It's out next week in Italy
Marketing - well it has been true for the last 30 odd years, but look at the new Alfa and Fiat ranges. Maybe the worm has finally turned.
Hi Alan
Sorry this reply is so late - spent all day yesterday painting a Fulvia! I think we are in lots of ways singing from the same hymn sheet, but you are not quite getting what I am saying. I am NOT saying the Delta is a bad car - I love it, but that's not the point. I love my Kappa V6 - it is absolutely the best car that I have ever owned or driven. I also have an 88 BMW 730i, and the Kappa is at least 10 times nicer to drive, as well as having much more character (but I must admit it is nowhere near as nicely finished). The reason it’s not in the list of cars I own below is because I was embarrassed to mention it…
But how many Kappas did Lancia manage to shift? 12000 a year. And how many 730is did BMW manage to shift? I don't know, but shedloads in comparison! Yes, some of it is down to the press, but not all of it (even the Italian press weren't particularly complimentary about the Kappa, and I long ago gave up reading British car magazines, which I think are rubbish - I read most of the stuff I get the info from in Italian and German, as both those countries seem to have a much better quality motoring press). Lancia's biggest problem is marketing, and it always has been. They are bl**dy useless at it, and it is largely because the marketing seems to be directed from Italy, and I can tell you as someone who works with Italian, used to live there and knows the country and culture very well that it is very different there from here. The guys in Turin just do not 'get' your average Brit Chav type, who was brought up on Fords, thinks Escorts won more WRCs than anything else, and thinks the Freelander is the best car on the planet. Personally I think these people and their views are idiotic, but the bottom line is that this is the market that these cultured, Armani suit-wearing, urbane individuals from Piedmont have to crack - and they haven't got a chance now and didn't in 1993 - after all, the Integrale is a zillion times as nice as any Ford, but that didn't cut much ice back then either!). And trying to flog a 5-door hatchback in an image vacuum isn't the way they are going to do it, even though we all know it is a good - possibly great - car, and might or might not be creating a new market segment (it is too heavy though - see quote later).
However, that's not the point. Whether Lancias really are good cars and/or are better than BMWs and/or whether the press says so is not what I am talking about. I am talking abut trying to crack a market in the correct way, and this they are most emphatically not doing. Whether you for one want a C-D segment car is irrelevant (I do too, but unfortunately there is little evidence that anyone else does). On what have they based their marketing analysis that there is a market for this car? Everyone knows that what you do is set up the image first and flog the cooking stuff later. Audi, which we both agree is what they should be aiming for, do this. They don't bring out the Audi A3 1.9 Sportback diesel (which is what the Delta is closest to) when they are trying to crack a new market. They bring out the TT the Q7, the RS4, etc. We all know that these aren't the cars that actually SELL in big numbers, but they are the ones that impress the neighbours, the people outside the school, your son's friends, etc. When you have brought out that kind of stuff, the A3 Sportback diesel sells itelf, but if you brought out the A3 Sportback diesel in a new market first it would sink without trace.
My son goes to a private school in Exeter, and the cars the Yummy Mummies there are driving are also what Lancia should be emulating. I see Merc Estates, Audi TTs, soft-roaders, and stuff like that. Almost no 'sensible' 1.9 diesel hatchbacks, because a lot of these are second cars and their function is to impress the neighbours and the other Yummy Mummies, not to be practical. I am sure a lot of these people have Golf diesels too but they don’t show them off outside the school!
Lancia don't market the rally cars properly to the Chavs and the rally fans and they don't market the upper middle class stuff (which should be their real market - in Italy they are still known as 'Gentleman's cars') properly to the upper middle classes. Instead they bring out a car that no-one is going to aspire to! People aspire to hatchbacks, but not when they have 5 doors (again, I am not taking about my preference - I prefer 5 doors myself, but I have Kappa and an S1 Appia so I am a saddo and they have got me sewn up as a market anyway. Unfortunately, though, like a lot of enthusiasts, I am not their target market because I haven't got the money to buy a Delta (most of mine goes on school fees!).
Re. engines and weight - this is another long-standing Fiat cock-up! They invented the common rail diesel engine, which was light years ahead of what everyone else had. So what did they do? Keep it in their own cars and use the advantage to wipe out everyone else's? Nope, they licensed it to Bosch, so everyone now has them except VW, who still prefer to produce Pumpe-Düse tractor engines) and so they have no 'unique selling point'. We are in agreement that Fiat's engines are the best on the planet, as I am reminded every time I drive the Kappa after the BMW (so what's new?), and their cars have great fuel consumption, but they are nowhere near as economical as they could and should be if they were lighter. All Fiat Group cars are outrageously heavy, segment by segment, for their size, and this is NOT good engineering - and more to the point it goes against Lancia's traditional brand values - the 'greats' like the Aurelia weren't overweight, which was exactly why they performed so well - and indeed, one of the reasons the Flaminia wasn't a great success was because its extra weight destroyed its performance and economy in relation to the Aurelia). Raymond Loewy, designer of the 53 Studebaker, Burlington Zephyr train and the Coke bottle among other things, had a sign above his desk. The sign said 'weight is the enemy' and this is true for EVERY car - weight compromises both performance AND economy, and as the way forward is to produce ever more economical cars, they have got lots to do with regard to weight reduction (not least because their engines are so good that there's not much they can do to improve consumption there! And don't tell me about the groundbreaking engines they have got lined up for the near future (MultiAir etc.) - I know about those already, but they STILL need to concentrate on weight reduction if they are not to squander the potential advantage conferred by these engines). At least they have a head start, because they are the only EU manufacturer currently on target to meet the EU’s silly CO2 range targets (I am a climate change sceptic…). Let’s hope they can build on the advantage, because experience tells me they will squander it!
Re. image confusion the car might stand out, but standing out as a 5-door hatchback won't matter because no-one will notice or aspire to it. I have been driving the Kappa, which is one of fewer than 10 in the UK, for nearly a year now, and only 1 person has commented on it (and he was the owner of the local scrapyard!). And how much more distinctive can you get than there only being 10 in the country? People 'blank' cars that don't fit into the groups they aspire to, and unfortunately nowadays that is sports cars and soft roaders. I would like to say it was interesting small cars like the Fiat 500 too (I would love Lancia to produce a retro Appia!), but unfortunately in Exeter the only ones I see are cluttering up the forecourt of the local dealer. I have seen precisely one on the road, which I find worrying!
I really, really, really want these cars to succeed. II have been into Fiats and Fiat group cars for over 35 years (I don't even really count Alfas because my interest in the cars stems from when the Fiat Group was Fiat, Lancia and Ferrari, and Alfa were 'the enemy', owned by the Italian State and operating from that 'other' town 200 km away from Turin...). I have loved the cars since I was 14 in 1972 (when my Dad bought a 125 Special), and as evidence I still have my old school folder, which has Fiat logos doodled all over it!), but since I have been into the cars the story has been one of decline and marketing incompetence, interspersed every now and then by a car which is 'make or break' for the company (I have articles in my collection which say that about the Fiat Uno (the only car I have ever bought new), the Dedra, the Grande Punto, and probably several others. The Fiat Group is like a drunk lurching along the edge of the pavement, every now and then teetering precariously and nearly falling in front of a bus...
Re. “people were offering deposits to FIAT as soon as the Fulvietta concept came out, and begging for it to be made” - that's exactly my point. The concept came out in 2003 and it is now 2008 and the actual car is still not out. These muppets don't even make the right cars when they KNOW the market exists for them. I wrote a German text book in 1997, and I got a sneak preview shot of the new Beetle on the cover. It was out within 2 years, and yet it has taken Fiat another 10 to come out with the 500, and Lancia STILL haven't made the Fulvietta. They really haven't got a clue! And it's not been FIAT (capitals) since circa the 1920s, when they changed to lower case...
Re. indefinite postponement - I wasn't taking abut the Italian launch, but the Brit. one. Olivier François might be bullish about the British market and have plausible reasons for postponing it, but the bottom line is that we still have no firm date for their entry to the British market, and I suspect that behind the scenes there are a lot of headless chickens...
Re. marketing - I wish could agree with you, but I remain sceptical. In view of how nice they are, Alfas don't actually sell very well at all (Lancia's relatively tiny total sales figure still beats Alfa's, at least until the arrival of the MiTo, largely because of home-market Ypsilon sales). That isn’t a sound basis on which to build a future (the Fiat Group's problem for the last 15 years or so has been largely sales outside Italy - it is very dangerous relying on the home market).
I will leave the last word (I have to go and do some more Fulvia painting!) to Luca de Meo, recently appointed i/c Alfa (what is true for Alfa is true for Fiat and Lancia too, as the engineering is so widely shared). He says in the Telegraph article below that the cars are too heavy and that they all need to go on a crash diet (the Brera is way too slow and heavy, and its CO2 and economy are disastrous for a car in its market sector, hence the recent request to Prodrive to sort out a bit). Here is what Sg. de Meo says (it's about half way down the article):
''Mr. de Meo remains tight-lipped about the rumoured Alfa Romeo SUV model, although it still remains a possibility at the end of the decade.
"Alfa Romeos need to be compact, agile, pretty powerful, beautiful and with a good engine noise. It's not rocket science, but it's difficult to actually do," says Mr de Meo. "We need a step change in the way we do business - if we fix the industrial side, it's almost done."
Mr de Meo also thinks that the current generation of Alfas are too heavy and, as part of the refurbishment, he plans to send every current model on a diet, reducing the weight of each by 110lb (50kg).''
And here is the link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/02/01/cnromeo101.xmlRight - off to get that spray gun primed...
